Guba, March 31, AZERTAC Thousands of Azerbaijanis have marched to Guba Genocide Memorial Complex to commemorate the centenary of the Genocide of Azerbaijanis of March, 1918.Participants in the march included state and government officials, members of parliament, heads of committees and companies, representatives of the diplomatic corps, religious leaders and citizens from all regions of the country. The marchers first put flowers at a statue of national leader Heydar Aliyev. The march started from the building of Guba branch of the State Pedagogical University. Organized in accordance with the Order of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan “On the centenary of the Genocide of Azerbaijanis of 1918”, the march ended at the Memorial Complex. The marchers chanted different slogans such as “Armenian vandals must be punished”, “Armenia`s hundred year old terror”, “We did not forget the genocide of 1918”, “Justice for Khojaly”, etc. They put a wreath and flowers at the memorial and observed a minute`s silence to commemorate the victims of the genocideThe Guba burial site of genocide victims was found during excavations on April 1, 2007. In 2009, the Cabinet of Ministers approved the "Action Plan to perpetuate the victims of mass murder in Guba", decided to create a memorial and conduct landscaping and improvement on the site of the mass graves. In July, 2007, the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of the National Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan began an extensive research on the mass grave, which was completed in September, 2008. The research established that the burial is related to the genocide committed by the Armenians against the local civilian population in 1918. The research also discovered the remains of more than 400 people belonging to different age groups in the grave. It was established that along with Azerbaijanis the mass grave contains the remains of brutally murdered Lezgins, Jews, Tats and other ethnic groups living in Guba.The establishment of a genocide memorial complex started in Guba by an order of President Ilham Aliyev of December 30, 2009. Created with support of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, Guba Genocide Memorial Complex opened on September 18, 2013.